DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant The 11th International Conference on Health Policy Statistics (ICHPS), under the broad and timely theme, Statistical Science at the Forefront of Health Policy Research, is a scientific conference that focuses on the interactive relationship between health services research and state-of-the-art statistical methodology. The main Sponsor of the conference is the Health Policy Statistics Section (HPSS) of the American Statistical Association (ASA). The duration and location of the ICHPS 2015 will be from October 7 to 9, 2015 in Providence, RI, USA. The overarching aim of ICHPS 2015 is to create an educational and research forum for statisticians, econometricians, psychometricians, and other experts in research methodology to exchange and build upon ideas, discuss research needs, and develop solutions to methodological challenges. Please see details via the following conference web link, hosted by the ASA: http://www.amstat.org/meetings/ichps/2015/index.cfm. The ICHPS's main aim is to create interfaces between methodologists and sophisticated health service researchers, health economists, and policy analysts so they can exchange and build on ideas they will disseminate to the broader health policy community. Specifially, the planned sessions will examine a broad range of topics that fit very well with the goals of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). These sessions will be useful to promote improvements in the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care by developing, debating and disseminating state-of-the-art research methods. Moreover, in line with the ASA's increasingly intensifying efforts to engage policy-makers and other stakeholders in the health policy arena, ICHPS 2015 will focus on data-centric statistical methodology related to health services research, particularly health policy issues of national and international importance. The invited program will cover key methodological and technical areas as follows: causal inference, instrumental variables, propensity scores, analysis of incomplete complex data systems, heterogeneous and/or random effect and hierarchical models, longitudinal and spatial modeling, meta-analysis and evidence synthesis, novel trial designs, real-world observational studies, and pragmatic trials. Most importantly, it does so in the context of addressing key health care policy research priorities. Topics presented at recent ICHPS meetings on comparative effectiveness research include examining evidence-based care, patient-reported outcomes analyses, and personalized medicine. ICHPS has long been an important venue to showcase new statistical approaches to measure provider performance, which is a critical area for measuring health care value and patient safety. In addition to invited and contributed sessions, the program will host workshops to provide research training and career development for new and existing health policy statisticians and outcome researchers in the methods, resources and applications at the forefront of contemporary health policy research. 1